


On the Ethical Ramifications of Raising the Dead Without Their Consent

by Sloane



Series: Blind Spot AU [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Bootleg Necromancy Leitner, Ethical Dilemmas, Gen, Pre-The Unknowing (The Magnus Archives), Unrecorded Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23568691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sloane/pseuds/Sloane
Summary: Jon leaves behind the literal ashes of a nascent friendship for someone else to deal with later.
Series: Blind Spot AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686808
Comments: 4
Kudos: 98





	On the Ethical Ramifications of Raising the Dead Without Their Consent

**Author's Note:**

> Okay this one might not make a lot of sense without reading [the main story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23234485/chapters/55630816) in this series, but I desperately want to keep that a single perspective—thus these little ficlits planting seeds for future chaos will keep popping up.

There was a hidden compartment in the desk that Jon inherited as Head Archivist. It was little more than slot at the bottom of the drawer that could be pried up to hide a few documents at the very most. Unfortunate that it was also empty when he discovered it, but it was still useful.

The booklet he removed from it from had a cover printed on mint green paper, someone’s cheap attempt to make an otherwise monochrome printing more eye-catching. The interior was still black text on white. It was bound simply with staples, and though there was no publication date, the font style and illustrations suggested it dated back to the late seventies.

The real question was why Jurgen Leitner saw fit put one of his accursed bookplates something printed out of someone’s garage. 

The title, “DEATH IS NOT THE END,” seemed like a typical evangelical recruitment tract, but a cursory examination showed none of the usual bible verses or proselytizing. It was actually quite terse, wasting a lot of paper to ask cryptic questions about life and death. Some bordered on nonsensical, but Jon wouldn’t dare reread anything to try and get a better idea of the point. Whole pages were devoted to rather mediocre line drawings of things like fields of flowers and people gazing thoughtfully into the middle distance, each seemingly unconnected to the text. It was like a Dadaist Wikihow conceived and printed long before the internet thrived. 

Such a realization might have inspired Jon to show Tim once—back when they were still speaking, because Tim used to link him the weirder sorts of pages all the time—but that ship had sailed and sunk some time ago. It felt like there was no more laughter to be had about anything lately, unless it was darkly joking about their odds of survival in any situation.

The looming threat of an apocalypse certainly didn’t help.

The second-to-last page in the booklet was just a dotted line forming a box and text reading ‘place your answer here’ under it.

The last page was blank. There was no address for where to send the completed form, if that was indeed what it was, and no further instructions.

Jon suspected he knew what it needed to be complete.

He placed Gerry’s page on the desk a safe distance apart from the Leitner and sat with his elbows on the desk between them. Finding the booklet in Artifact Storage was no easy task, given it was never properly catalogued and had been shoved in the bookshelves at random, but once Jon let his mind wander he found his hand also drifted to it on its own accord. 

There was something wryly amusing about a supposed Leitner in the stacks, improperly contained right under Gertrude’s nose for so many years. But then the active ingredient seemed to be missing, so it wasn’t quite dangerous— _yet_.

Gerry would probably know exactly what it needed to be activated, and what the effects might be if it was, but Jon couldn’t bring himself to read the words to summon him—that would mean explaining what he was thinking. That would mean going against the advice he already knew Gerry would give him—burn it, just to be safe.

If his theory was correct, the cheap little booklet really could bring the dead back to life. 

Gerry had asked him to burn his page, but that was before Jon knew about this.

He didn’t know what to call the thing. Death is Not the End was a clumsy title, but then many of the Fears also had secondary titles that were a mouthful. He wondered which of them touched this one. Surely not the End itself?

Jon ran his fingers over the green paper, but no answers leapt out at him. The drawing on the cover was of a sunflower with a spiraling design in its center. Could it be...? No, it was probably a coincidence. Such design motifs were popular in the sixties and seventies, given the sheer prevalence of mind-altering drugs. Jon glanced up, wondering if a door would appear if he called out to Helen, but ultimately he kept his mouth shut.

He didn’t want to press his luck.

That was way he ultimately put the booklet back and took out his lighter. That, and Gertrude Robinson had already done enough to poor Gerry after his death. Jon was better than that. He made a promise. He was going to keep it.

He realized then that his tape recorder had been on the entire time. There wasn’t much for it to pick up—the opening and closing of the desk drawer, the rustling of pages, the quiet chuckle and maybe a sigh as he thought about Tim. A gross waste of tape, really.

Jon rewound it until he heard the garbed chirp of his own speech from his last testament, advanced it until it hit the end, and pressed record again.

When it was over, he thought about burning the booklet as well, but he couldn’t do that. He wanted to know exactly what it did first.

As for what remained of Gerry...

Jon tipped out the little glass jar he used to hold paper clips and swept the ashes of Gerry’s page into it. He realized too late that he had used the booklet to do it, but the front cover thankfully did not react. Jon grimaced at the smear of gray across the sunflower on the cover. 

There was a knock at the door, prompting Jon to hurriedly stash both the booklet and the ashes in the desk drawer before sitting back and trying to act casual.

Basira gave him an odd look as she entered.

“Were you... _smoking_ in here?”

Jon brushed a loose strand of hair behind his ear and smiled awkwardly. “Recording equipment went a bit haywire and ate one of the tapes.”

“Not my last testament, I hope.”

“Basira, that’s just in case—”

“I know, I know,” Basira said, holding a hand up to stop him. “I was kidding. Ready to go over the plan one last time?”

Jon gave her a withering look, as if he was one to talk about poor taste in jokes, and pushed himself up from the desk. He made a mental note to find a better hiding place for the... _contraband_ later.

“Anyway,” he said, crossing around to meet Basira by the door. “Those are all private. Ideally, no one will even hear them. We’re... We’ll get through this. We’ll win.”

“Yeah,” Basira said. There was no enthusiasm in her her voice at all. “Sure we will, Jon. Because we’re the good guys, right?”

She stepped back, allowing him to go ahead of her. The look she gave him was... well, he just said on tape that he was going to stop being paranoid, didn’t he?

Jon swallowed hard.

“Yeah,” he said. “We are.”

As they walked through the archives, which felt massive and empty when it was just the two of them, he added, “And if we can’t do it, no one can.”

But he couldn’t muster any enthusiasm, either.

Part of him wished Gerry was there—alive, able to contribute his considerable experience to what they were about to do—but it was too late for that.

Jon made his choice and let Gerry rest. That was that.

All that was left was to go forward.

And possibly also die.

**Author's Note:**

> Really, what kind of monster would just use a Leitner without knowing exactly what it does OR asking the ghost first?
> 
> Stay tuned to part 1 for the answer.


End file.
